


the beautiful changes (in such kind ways)

by TolkienGirl



Series: All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [304]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Friends to...well we'll see won't we, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Medical Care, Mithrim, Sticks & Frog, Wachiwi, title form a poem by Richard Wilbur
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-29
Updated: 2020-09-29
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:21:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26707420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TolkienGirl/pseuds/TolkienGirl
Summary: “Let me help you,” she said.
Relationships: Beren Erchamion & Original Female Character(s), Fingon | Findekáno & Maedhros | Maitimo, Fingon | Findekáno & Original Female Character(s)
Series: All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [304]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1300685
Comments: 2
Kudos: 10





	the beautiful changes (in such kind ways)

Fingon had once had two brothers, and because Wachiwi was ever used to gathering her own spirits into familiar scenes, painting her mother here and her sister there, with new threads in their hair and new, gentle lines on their faces, she could not help but imagine lost Argon, too.

She gave him Aredhel’s nose in Fingon’s young face, making it younger still. Argon had Turgon’s hair, kept short, and eyes the exact color of his father’s.

She wanted to see, she supposed, the part of Fingon that was dead with him.

They would never know each other whole. She would never know the Fingon who believed that happiness sprang readily from claimed land. She would never know Fingon shielded by his mother’s love. He would never know the same for Wachiwi. But Wachiwi had a heart full of companions who had not known her whole. Why must the future be ever clouded by the past? She had planted her spirits among the huddled band on windswept plains, and she planted them now in Mithrim’s community. Her mother and sister, and Argon stitched of many features, were soft in the shadows of the eating and drinking and talking that filled the stone walls with warmth.

Outside, winter turned itself to rain. There was no use in making grief one with the storm-bank lying overhead.

Inside the fort, there was talk of Christmas coming. Wachiwi had heard of Christmas; a great feast, it seemed, in towns and houses that could afford it. It was not honored by all settlers. The more dour disregarded it all together. But Thingol—though dour in his own way—was also extravagant in particular seasons. When Haleth’s company wintered in Doriath, they were given gifts.

“Gifts for the children,” Beren was saying, which had brought all this to Wachiwi’s mind. “They have so little—do you think—”

“Frog will not want more moccasins, _I_ think,” she said, with a wry laugh. Then, because Beren’s spirit was wonderful to her, she added, “But I’ll help you. I have trinkets.”

Though gifts were more than that, of course.

She did not see Fingon as much as she wanted to. He was burning, burning like the killing fires that tore through prairie grass and the long arms of trees.

Wachiwi thought of him every night before she slept, though _he_ never slept in the hall. Alone with her thoughts—alone with them, somehow, even as she spoke comfortably with Beren, with Miles Red Cloud, with Tabitha and Aredhel and Estrela and the children—

She began to realize how much of Fingon was planted beside her.

He had cut off his cousin’s hand. This was the latest news. A ground-shaking thing that passed quickly and subtly through those interested in learning of it. _She_ learned it from Beren, who learned it from Finrod.

 _His brothers are angry_ , Beren had said, not looking at her. Not avoiding her gaze, exactly: he was looking at his own rutted palm.

 _I do not care for them_ , Wachiwi had said. In truth, she did not mind Caranthir or Amras, but at that moment, she was made so angry herself, over their selfish, cruel affection.

Fingon had two hands, and he made use of them. Wachiwi had touched his hands. She had also touched his face and his chest, his arms and legs, when he was far from any hope of inner fire, pale and cold.

She lay awake, now, remembering.

“I know this whole place,” she said to Beren, “but not myself in it. Do you feel the same?”

He said he did.

“What are you going to do?” But already she knew; he was cutting leather for new moccasins, for Frog.

“I am Finrod’s friend,” he said. “And he is mine. They need us, now. Faces that do not belong to a bad old story.”

She cocked her head. She wondered if Beren saw spirits, too. He had lost his family also, and his tribe. He had even lost Luthien, at least for a time. Knowing them both, Wachiwi could well imagine how joined they were in every thought. Like the earth and sky.

Like fire and Fingon.

Wachiwi loved to laugh, and Frog and Sticks had given some laughter back to her that was taken by worry. Worry over Haleth and worry over Fingon and worry over the way the world changes a good deal just when it has seemed to stand still as a horse weary of running—yes, Wachiwi was growing old.

“You _are_ pretty,” Sticks said admiringly, one day, when Wachiwi was combing out her hair. “That’s some fine hair. Like a tail.”

“Thank you,” said Wachiwi. “Would you like some threads for yours?”

Sticks turned as red as an apple. She was a very white little girl; even her hair was almost white. Happiness showed in her skin.

Wachiwi twisted blue thread into Sticks’ braids. She was running out of thread, but gifts were as needful as rain. Sticks bounded away, her gratitude confined to her smiles. Wachiwi knew she was going to the sickroom.

_His brothers are angry._

She did not know _him_. The dying, living man who had taken Fingon and half of this world, even while he lay sleeping.

She rested with her own anger. She drank it. She spat it up. In the end, just before sleeping, she decided that she wanted to know everyone’s Maedhros, everyone’s Russandol, but not as much as she wanted Fingon.

She wanted Fingon.

“You,” she said, blunt as Haleth might, but with a wide smile such as Haleth never wore, “Is that what you call _supper_?”

Fingon blinked at her, dismayed. Owlish. But his face was not as round as it should be. It was growing thin. Fire could make it so as well as ice and hunger. “I ate,” he said.

“Too quickly.”

She folded her arms, planted her feet, still smiling. “We are here for a long time,” she said. “Remember? All our way to this place? It was long. The sun walks its own path despite us.”

Fingon rumpled the braids she liked to make for him. When had he last let her touch his hair? “Everyone is chiding me,” he said. “Father and Finrod and Mae—I am sorry, Wachiwi, but I have no time to talk of _eating_ and _sleeping_ when—”

“Let me help you,” she said. With the words, she unfolded her arms, and with her arms, she reached for him. A hand on each of his firm, straight shoulders. He was surprised; she was surprised at herself. “Fingon, I want to help you.”

“You do help me,” he said softly. His mouth was too close; his tired eyes too bright. Wachiwi could see all her spirits in him, and the grief that took her laughter was as deep as a valley—as much a warning as her mother’s blood. “You have helped a great deal.”

“Everyone else,” she answered. “I have helped everyone else. But you and I are friends, Fingon. Are we not friends?”

(She coaxed him away that first night, when his father’s word alone could not. She washed his hair. She let him weep. She would stand between him and the fire, if the two were not already one.)

“We are friends,” he said. The impatience that accompanied Fingon’s particular fear (fear not for himself, but for everyone else) was not in his voice; it was in the way he stood. Wachiwi wanted to dig her fingers into his shoulders, so that he would have to struggle to escape her.

What she did instead was gamble as skillfully as she once had against Wister, on a rough-cut table, in air that was rich and sour with the scent of manure. 

“I want to meet your cousin,” she said. “Maedhros.”

Fingon’s hands curled around Wachiwi’s wrists. He lifted them from his shoulders and brought them together, palm to palm. Then with his right hand, he gave her knuckles a gentle pat. She was reminded of Fingolfin, when she had half-expected something else.

She more than half expected that he would say, _No_ , and that it would hurt her as few things left living could.

“I will have to ask him,” Fingon said. “It is important, you see, that I grant him choices, whenever I can.”


End file.
